Two astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, are stuck in space. They flew to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, barely docked at the ISS, and now they don’t know how to get back to Earth.

The Starliner spacecraft is a separate story. We are more used to Boeing making airplanes, but in fact they are not new to rocket construction.

However, there is something wrong with Boeing lately… Then their airplanes have doors falling off in flight, then all sorts of systems fail, causing «iron birds» to fall out of the sky. And Starliner was made somehow wrong.

The launch of Starliner was postponed several times, because first the astronauts heard that the oxygen valve in the fuel system of the Atlas V rocket was rattling. With this valve, by the way, there was already an ugly story. The part was developed by ValveTech, a longtime partner of Boeing and NASA. But NASA decided to save money and refused to work with ValveTech. The valves themselves were ordered to be made by someone else, it’s not even entirely clear who. As a result, Starliner lost its orientation in space during the test launch. Then it was discovered that the ship itself was leaking helium, which is needed for orientation in space and motion correction.

Looked where the leak, and for some reason experts made a strange decision: do not repair anything, launch as it is. They say that the hole is not big. With this hole Starliner flew into space. Naturally, it almost fell apart on the way. The first attempt to dock with the ISS failed, the ship did not obey. A total of five engines failed.

In general, with a bit of luck, docked. Two astronauts made it to the ISS. But how to return is the big question… You can’t fly away in a broken ship. And now NASA is thinking about what to do: whether to involve Dragon capsule Ilon Musk, or ask for help from Russia to send its ship to the ISS, which would return the astronauts to Earth.

So for now it remains as it is: the astronauts are guests on the ISS, they are not kicked out of there, and there is a supply of provisions on the station.